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Housing Hurts Area In Ranking

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By MICHAEL SASSO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 3, 2007

TAMPA - Unemployment is low and the labor force is still growing, but the area's housing market continues to drag down the local economy, according to a new snapshot of Bay area economic conditions.

On Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Partnership, a local economic development agency, released its quarterly economic scorecard. The scorecard measures the Bay area against five other Southern metropolitan areas - Jacksonville, Atlanta, Dallas, and Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte, N.C. - on issues including job creation, education and housing.

Overall, the Bay area ranked fourth in economic strength, ahead of Jacksonville and Atlanta, but behind Raleigh-Durham, Dallas and Charlotte. The Bay area also ranked fourth in the agency's last economic scorecard, in April.

Among the findings:

•Slowing job growth. In the recent past, the Bay area boasted the strongest job growth among the six cities, but that has changed drastically, and the area now ranks last. As of the second quarter of this year - the most recent figures that were available - the number of new jobs grew by just 1.16 percent over the same period a year ago. That placed the region last among the six metro areas; Dallas led the group with a job growth rate of 3.17 percent.

The Bay area was hurt by the loss of some 8,000 manufacturing, construction and transportation jobs, said Larry Henson, the Tampa Bay Partnership's business intelligence officer.

•Low unemployment. While jobs are not being created as quickly, the Bay area continues to enjoy a low unemployment rate of 3.6 percent. That is second lowest among the metro areas, behind only Jacksonville, which has a 3.5 percent unemployment rate.

•Strong education. The Bay area ranked second among the six metro areas in education. For example, the Bay area's mean SAT score was 1,003. Only Raleigh-Durham's mean score of 1,035 was higher. Also, the area ranked second in number of associate and bachelor's degrees awarded per worker.

•Weakest housing market. Owing to the housing boom and bust, the Bay area ranked last in the housing category. For example, during the first quarter of 2007 the number of housing permits issued fell by nearly 64 percent compared with the same period a year ago. By comparison, Charlotte has not seen nearly as big a drop-off and recorded only an 8.3 percent reduction in permits.

Tampa scored last in the affordability of single-family homes and apartments, owing to a combination of high prices and low household incomes.

Roy McCraw, a vice president of the Tampa Bay Partnership and chairman of the Committee of One Hundred, said affordable housing used to be a selling point for the Bay area, but that has changed in recent years as prices skyrocketed. To tackle the problem, the partnership is considering organizing an investment fund - using private dollars - that would go toward building affordable work force housing, he said.

According to one Florida economics professor, Sean Snaith of the University of Central Florida, the housing market should start to turn around in the Bay area and throughout Florida by 2009. He said housing's downturn appears to have affected related industries, such as the mortgage and construction sectors, the most, but has not severely affected the local economy overall.

'The state and the region's economies are still strong,' said Snaith, who runs UCF's Institute for Economic Competitiveness. 'Here, we're still fundamentally talking about an oversupply of housing as opposed to weak demand.'

Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at msasso@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7865.

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